


The Orpheum, the Boys, and Bobby

by riiverton



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e09 Stand Tall, Everyone Is Gay, F/M, Gay as hell, Longing, M/M, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Sappy, This is the gayest shit ever, i watched the episode so many times for this, youre welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28804563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riiverton/pseuds/riiverton
Summary: what if we saw the performance of Stand Tall at the Orpheum from Bobby's perspective?
Relationships: Alex Mercer & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Luke Patterson, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 91





	The Orpheum, the Boys, and Bobby

**Author's Note:**

> idk, but sunset curve was all a polycule in the 90s and you can pry it from my cold dead hands! i hope you enjoy <3 <3

When he first saw the video, his heart stopped beating for a moment.

It was a YouTube video, over Carrie’s shoulder. Any other video, he wouldn’t have taken a second glance, but he heard a familiar voice, and his head snapped right back around, just to make sure it wasn’t him.

But there he was - Luke, in all his goddamn beauty, grinning and strumming and looking like not a day had passed, stealing glances at Reggie and Alex and Julie? Carrie’s friend? His head was spinning. He called his agent. He got them tickets to their next gig - the Orpheum. The theater that was supposed to be their breakout set. The worst night of his life.

“Two tickets,” he hears himself say, distantly, “For the Orpheum.” 

~~~

Maybe Carrie’s right, maybe this is a mistake. 

Bobby checks his watch absently, but it says the same time it did four seconds ago when he last checked it, and he rubs his knees absently, trying to think of what he’d say if he saw them, what he would do. Twenty five years, and they haven’t changed a bit. He knows they died. That is the truth. But ghosts are just… fiction, right? Or maybe the song they wrote 25 years ago still rings true, maybe clocks move forward but the three of them really don’t get older, and they’re just immortal beings here to haunt him for his sins, and-

“This is going to be... interesting,” Carrie says, crossing her arms over her chest and sinking back into her seat, “I wonder if she’ll even show, or if she and her holograms will chicken out before she even goes on.” 

“Give it a chance, Car, see what happens,” Bobby says without thinking, close to biting his nails, a habit he dropped when he started meditating. It seems like he’s going to pick it back up now. 

“Just saying,” she rolls her eyes, picking up her phone again, and Bobby goes back to anxiously watching the stage. No instruments are set up, aside from a keyboard and a platform for a drumkit, but the platform itself is bare. 

The lights flash the five minute warning, and the audience cheers and whoops in response. Carrie scoffs and Bobby fidgets. The bass-filled pump-up song thrums through the theater in time with Bobby’s heart and he tries not to think too much about the way the music slides through his soul. Maybe this is how Luke felt- feels. Maybe this is how he made art - not just music, but something that could reach out and make his heart pick up the pace like this. 

Well, that’s how he’s always felt around Luke. 

The loudspeakers in the theater crackle to life.

“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Put your hands in the air for Julie and the Phantoms!” The announcer’s voice is sing-song and bright, and the ends of his words are lost in the applause. Bobby can spot a few familiar faces ahead of him, standing near the stage - Julie’s dad, cheering wildly, with her little brother and aunt. All of them are beaming. Bobby feels sick.

The room spins before Julie makes it onto the stage, the red and pink lights catching her purple dress and making her glow. But he can’t look at her, only at the place where Alex’s drum kit used to sit, and then he can hear the sirens, and his breath hitches, because they were supposed to be here by now. Where did they go? Why aren’t they here? Are the sirens for them? Oh my god, they’re-

“Look, she’s nervous,” Carrie says, wrinkling her nose. 

“I would be,” Bobby mumbles. Her voice brought him back to reality, and his eyes are drawn back to the stage. 

“Don't blink / No, I don't want to miss it,” Julie begins, and Bobby nods. He doesn’t want to blink. Not this time. 

“And it's one, two, three, four times / That I'll try for one more night,” so many nights up late, wondering if he could have stopped it, hearing those sirens echoing in his mind, hoping it was all fake and Luke would kick open the door and flop down on the bed next to him, trying to keep the music that Luke wrote in his brain and in his body, feeling Reggie’s bass and Alex’s drums in his heart and Luke’s words in his soul, wishing he could feel them one more time. Wishing he could feel Luke’s hands, his lips again. 

“Whatever happens, even if I'm the last standing, / I’ma stand tall,” because he had to. He found Luke’s old notebooks, and a handful of their old demos. He mailed copies everywhere. He waited for someone to pick him up. He would immortalize Luke, he would immortalize Sunset Curve. He stood tall. He had to. He couldn’t let them die like that. 

The crowd cheers Julie’s high notes. Bobby barely hears them. 

He holds his breath as he waits for the boys - his boys - to appear. 

It’s Alex first. 

The drums appear on top of the platform, and then Alex’s face shines above them. He grins at the crowd, and then at Julie, and Bobby leans forward without realizing it. That’s him. That’s his Alex, and then that’s his Reggie, appearing right between them, wearing a red waistcoat and looking like a prince. They both watch her with adoration. They both have eyes only for her. 

Bobby’s heart aches. He remembers what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those looks, those longing gazes, he remembers what it’s like to be looked at with such genuine love, and he wants to appear on stage next to them, twenty-five years younger and desperately in love with a boy. 

Julie launches into the pre-chorus and Bobby’s chest tightens as Luke flickers onto the stage. He blinks out of existence and then back in to the beat of Bobby’s pulse, the sound of his heart in his ears, there is the boy he loved decades ago, picking up the chorus. Even from his seat he can see their eyes light up, can see Alex’s posture change, Reggie’s smile come easier, Julie’s singing becomes a little less strained, and Bobby feels like he can’t breathe.

His boys. His band. Live as they can be, in the flesh as they come, right there, and he should be the one back to back with Reggie at the front of the stage, he should be the one stealing glances from Luke, grinning at Alex and calling words of encouragement to him while off the mic. It should be him, it should be him, it should be-

Alex stands, gripping his mic, and Bobby can see a sliver of golden skin from the deep-V of his shirt. Reggie takes his mic stand back and looks out into the audience, grinning. Luke finishes off the harmony, Julie reclaims the melody, and 

“I gotta keep on dreaming, 'cause I gotta catch that feeling,” Julie leads Luke across the stage with her mic, and that was Bobby’s thing, he would do that to Luke, their faces so close together he could smell the gum that he told Luke to spit out before rehearsal, he would wonder if he should steal a kiss, if Luke was wondering the same, and then the song ends. 

The last note falls away. The four of them look out at an adoring crowd, and Bobby doesn’t know if his heart is still beating.

Luke takes Alex’s hand for the bows and Bobby watches his eyes sweep the room. It takes all of his restraint not to jump up and catch the gaze, but Luke finds him anyway. He gives the slightest, tiniest nod, before raising Alex’s hands and diving into a bow.

And then they vanish. 

Bobby doesn’t know if he’ll ever breathe again.


End file.
